“That’s why we only have the one entrance to this base,” Raisor said.
“One physical entrance,” Hammond corrected him. “That’s the door you came in through, off the hangar. We also have the entrance our RVers use. That’s a narrow opening— which we call the Bright Gate— in the psychic wall that
Sybyl controls. She can let you out Bright Gate to the initial jump point on top of the mountain and she can also let RVers in when they return to the initial jump point.”
“What does this field do to other things?” Dalton asked. “Once it’s running, do we have communications?”
“We’re not the only place that uses this field,” Raisor said. “Every top secret secure site our country has is surrounded by a psychic field just in case the Russians do have an RV capability. Once we developed the wall, our scientists were able to develop a special cable that can shield a link from inside to outside and allow uninterrupted communications. That’s something we don’t think the Russians have managed to do yet, so we have an advantage there.”
“Let’s get back to the other side’s capabilities then,” Dalton said. “If the Russians do have RVers,” he asked, “wouldn’t they know about this plot in their neck of the woods?”
“If they have remote viewers and if the remote viewers happened to catch this plot, yes, then they would know. But we were lucky; our RVer who picked this up literally stumbled across it checking on some other information on a different tasking. The odds that a Russian RVer found the same thing are unknown.”
“What about— ” Dalton began, but the door swung open and a technician stuck her head in.
“Lieutenant Jackson is back.”
Raisor and Hammond headed for the door.
“Who is Lieutenant Jackson?” Dalton asked, following them.
“One of the RVers you saw in a tank when you got here. She’s been out on a mission.”
They entered the main room. The last two Special Forces men, Barnes and Monroe, had gone into the tanks, leaving Dalton the only one out. At the far end, a woman was shivering, a blanket over her shoulder, wiping embryonic fluid off her face with a towel.
“Lieutenant Jackson,” Raisor said as he came up to her. “Your report?”
Jackson didn’t respond right away. She spit, none too elegantly, and coughed, a dribble of dark liquid rolling down her chin before she wiped it off. She was a tall, slight woman, in her middle twenties, short blond hair plastered to her skull, her skin pale and covered with goosebumps.
“Is everything static?” Raisor asked.
Jackson coughed. “No, sir, it’s not. They’ve changed the schedule.” She looked at Dalton, then back to Raisor.
Dalton had seen that look before— she had information she wasn’t sure she should share in front of people she had never seen before.
“You take care of your men,” Raisor said to Dalton. He grabbed Jackson’s arm and helped her to her feet. “Come with me.”
“Hold on!” Dalton put his hand up. “I want to talk to my commander. I have to inform him about what happened to Sergeant Stith.”
Raisor stared at him for a few seconds, then nodded. “You can use the secure line down the hall there. But make sure you don’t say a word about the mission. Is that clear, Sergeant Major?”
“I hear you,” Dalton said.
“You can inform Colonel Metter about Sergeant Stith, but he has to hold official notification until we can implement a cover story.”
“I know the way the game is played.”
The red light went out. General Rurik relaxed slightly, knowing that Feteror was back inside his metal home and the window was shut.
“Report!” Rurik snapped into the microphone that linked him directly to Feteror’s auditory center. There was no way Feteror could escape the noise, and Rurik relished that power.
“I’ve done as you requested. There has been no change.” The tinny voice that came out of a speaker on the master console actually sounded tired.
“The Mafia?”
“They still plan to attack in seven days.”
Rurik smiled. “What do you know of a Colonel Seogky of the GRU?”
“I’ve never heard of him.”
“We believe he had a meeting with the same Mafia group. His body was found in a park near Kiev along with that of a member of the Mafia.”
“I know nothing of this.”
“Anything else?”
“No.”
“Good night.” Rurik threw a switch and the power to the cylinder went down to bare life-support levels. “Pleasant nightmares,” Rurik whispered into the mike as he shut it off.
Barsk stared out the window of the plane at the ocean twenty thousand feet below, where white dots indicating icebergs drifted in the Arctic Ocean.
“We drop at fifteen thousand.” Leksi’s voice was hoarse from too many cigarettes and too much vodka. The men gathered around him all had the same hard look; they were former Soviet Special Operations soldiers, searching for a better life outside of the military.
Leksi unfolded a map. “This island holds the target.”
One of the men laughed. “October Revolution Island. Perfect.”
Leksi pointed at the map. “The GRU has an observation post here, on this mountain, overlooking our target.”
“I thought you said this place has been abandoned for thirty-five years,” a mercenary noted.
“It has been.”
“And the GRU is still watching it?”
“Our target holds something very important,” Leksi said.
“What can be that important?”
Leksi looked up from the map and stared at the man. Then he continued the briefing. Barsk listened, but he wasn’t jumping with the team. He was to stay on board the aircraft with the pilot and wait until Leksi gave the all-clear signal. Then they would land on the old runway that had serviced the abandoned base.
“Let’s rig,” Leksi ordered at the conclusion. He looked at his watch. “We’re fifteen minutes out.”
The plane was a military AN-12 Cub, surplus that Oma had bought off some Air Force personnel eager to make money. Barsk considered it interesting that in the blink of an eye the former Soviet Union had embraced capitalism fiercely; the problem was that there were none of the established checks and balances that Western societies had developed.
In the front half of the cargo bay, a large backhoe was chained down along with other excavating equipment. A pallet full of explosives was tied down just in front of the backhoe. Knowing that he was riding in a plane with a load of C-4 and detonating devices didn’t do much for Barsk’s emotional health.
The plane banked and Barsk eyed the pallet warily.
Leksi thrust a mask at Barsk. “Put it on.”
Barsk slipped it over his head. He felt the cool oxygen flow.
The mercenaries were hooked into small tanks on their chests, bulky parachutes on their backs. Weapons were tied off on their left shoulder. Leksi had a headset on, listening to the pilot. He pushed his mask aside to yell.
“Depressurizing!”
With a shudder, the back of the plane began opening. The bottom half lowered, making a platform, while the top slid up into the large space under the tail.
The twenty men followed Leksi as he walked onto the platform. Barsk shivered from the freezing air swirling in. He edged closer to the heat duct over his head. Leksi moved a large bundle to the edge of the ramp.
A green light flashed. Leksi pushed the bundle, and the men tumbled off the ramp, following it.
* * *
Fifteen thousand feet below, First Lieutenant Gregor Potsk was concerned about wood. With winter coming, heat was the first priority, and resupply had gotten so strained that they were lucky to get enough food, never mind kerosene for the heater built into the concrete-and-log bunker set high on the side of the mountain. Two years ago they’d converted to wood, but the problem was, they had already cut down all trees within two miles. More wood meant going further.
Potsk shrugged his greatcoat on and picked up an AK-74 and a large band saw. He waited. Two of his detail of eight men stood.
“Let us go,” Potsk said, opening the heavy door. He knew he could order his men to do this, but the situation here was strained at best. He believed in leading by example.
They’d been here for eight months already, having been flown in as soon as the weather had cleared the previous spring. They had four months left on their tour of duty, and morale was plummeting with the pending onset of winter. Especially since there seemed to be no purpose to this task-ing— watching an abandoned airstrip and the blocked entrance to a long out-of-use underground bunker. Ice crackled underfoot as Potsk traversed the hillside, heading for a valley where the closest trees were.
“Sir!” one of the men said, tapping him on the arm and then pointing upwards.
Out of the low-hanging gray clouds a parachutist appeared, then another. Soon there were twenty chutes in sight as the first one touched down about two hundred meters away, tumbling down the hillside until the man got his feet under him and cut away the chute.
“Sir?” The soldiers with Potsk were waiting on his orders.
Potsk looked from the closest jumper to the bunker, now over a quarter mile away. He knew they would never beat the paratroopers there. And he had no idea who these men were. Perhaps Spetsnatz running some sort of training exercise. But then he should have been notified. Of course, he immediately thought, things were so disorganized in the military that whoever was jumping might not have known the island was occupied. In fact, Potsk thought as he started walking toward the jumpers, these men shouldn’t know about this place at all, because it was highly classified.
“Hello!” Potsk called out.
The man stared at him. He was wearing a black jumpsuit with no markings or insignia.
“This is a classified area. There is to be no trespassing. Who is your commander?” Potsk demanded.
“I am.” The voice came from the right, and Potsk spun around.
Potsk stepped back. The man towered above him, and Potsk noted that there was a scar running down the side of his face. “I said— ”
The man brought up a submachine gun and fired a burst, blowing back one of the soldiers with Potsk. He swung the smoking muzzle toward Potsk. “Drop your weapons.”
Potsk swallowed, dropping his AK-74, the other soldier doing the same. Behind the large man, some of the paratroopers were setting up a tripod and opening a case.
“Who are you?”
“Are all the rest of your men in the bunker?” Leksi demanded.
Potsk glanced toward the bunker, then back at Leksi.
“Tell me the truth.” Leksi shifted the aim of his gun and fired. The round caught the other soldier in the leg, spinning him down to the ground. The man moaned in pain, looking up at Potsk.
“They are all in the bunker,” Potsk said. He knew the shots would have alerted his men.
“Don’t lie to me.” Leksi fired again, this time right between the soldier’s eyes. Potsk was stunned at the sight of the brains splattered onto the icy ground. The muzzle of Leksi’s submachine gun turned in his direction. “Are they all in the bunker?”
“Yes.”
Leksi signaled. The paratroopers had placed a missile on top of the tripod. With a flash the missile was off. One man watched through a sight, leading the wire-guided missile. It smashed into the front of the bunker, the armor-piercing nose punching through, the charge going off inside, making puree of the inhabitants.
“You pig!” Potsk yelled.
Leksi fired, almost negligently with one hand, the bullet taking off the top of Potsk’s head.
Leksi grabbed his commo man. “Bring the plane in. We don’t have much time.”
Chapter Ten
“I don’t give a damn what this guy says.” Colonel Metter’s voice was harsh, even with the dampener of the secure phone line. “I’m running this up the flagpole before we lose anyone else.”
“Raisor said that we have to keep quiet about Sergeant Stith’s death until he gives us the release,” Dalton said. He was standing in a room off the experimental chamber, talking to his commander on a direct satellite link phone. “I don’t think running it up the flagpole is going to do any good,” he added.
“How are the rest of the men?” Metter asked.
Looking around the door, Dalton could see into the chamber. “They just pulled the first two after me out. Both are okay. The rest seem to be doing all right.”
“You know they’re going to tell me to forget about it.” Metter was calming down, thinking about the reality of the situation.
Dalton knew what his commander meant. No matter what the colonel said, the Pentagon was going forward with this. “It’s the nature of the job, sir.”
“But I’m still going on record against this. From what you’re telling me, they haven’t got a good handle on what they’re trying to do.”
“No, sir, I don’t think they have.” Dalton hadn’t told Metter about the nukes, and he knew he couldn’t. “But they do have a high-priority mission that all this is aimed for. And it’s got a short fuse.”
“Is the mission worth losing men over?”
Dalton thought briefly of all the various missions he had been on where men had died. Few had been worth it. “Yes, sir, it is.”
There was a long silence. Dalton could hear the slight crackling in the earpiece, indicating the MILSTARS satellite the call was going through was frequency hopping, making sure the transmission couldn’t be intercepted. Dalton could see Raisor walking toward him across the experimental chamber. “Got to go, sir.”
“Good luck.”
The phone went dead.
“I assume you didn’t reveal any information you weren’t supposed to,” Raisor said.
Dalton glanced around. No one was close. He stepped close to the CIA man, invading his personal space. “Listen to me very carefully, because we are not having this conversation again. I know you’re holding information back from us. I highly recommend you stop doing that. Because what we don’t know could get us killed.”
Raisor started to say something, but Dalton got even closer. “I was doing special operations while you were still in diapers. Don’t treat me or these men like we’re just pieces of the machine to be used. We’re not. And we won’t accept being treated that way.”
Raisor met his eyes. “What are you going to do? Complain to your colonel?”
Dalton didn’t say anything. He remained perfectly still, looking deep into the other man’s eyes, until finally Raisor nodded. “I understand where you’re coming from.” He changed the subject abruptly. “We’ve got new information that changes things. You want to be informed, follow me.”
Dalton trailed the man across the experimental chamber. Captain Anderson was pulling on his fatigue shirt, his face drawn. Dalton gestured for the captain while Raisor called out for Dr. Hammond to join them.
The four entered the classroom. Raisor and Hammond sat behind the front desk while Dalton and Anderson took other seats.
“The nuclear weapons convoy has been moved up five days,” Raisor said.
Silence greeted that statement.
“We’re going to have to be operational in forty-seven hours,” Raisor continued.
Dalton waited on Hammond, as it was clear this was the first she had heard of this also.
She finally spoke. “That will be hard.”
“We have no option,” Raisor said.
“There are plenty of options,” Dalton countered.
“No, there aren’t.” Raisor leaned back in his seat, putting more distance between the two. “This is not open for discussion. We are going in forty-seven hours. The only issue is how do we prepare.”
Dalton repeated.
“I’m going with you, of course,” Raisor said. He turned to Captain Anderson. “You are the ranking man here, not the sergeant major. You are under orders to comply with any and all instruction
s I give you.”
“What the sergeant major is saying makes sense,” Anderson said. “I don’t think we can do this in two days. We’ve already lost a man.”
“It’s not up to you,” Raisor said. “Plus the person who knows if you can or can’t do it in two days is Dr. Hammond, not you or the sergeant major. And if you can’t follow orders, I’ll relieve you and find someone who can.”
Dalton remained silent, as did Captain Anderson. They knew that by doing so, they were assenting to the mission, but there really wasn’t much choice now. They’d pushed it as far as they could short of disobeying orders and getting court-martialed.
“We can do it,” Hammond interjected. “But we have to really accelerate the schedule. I’d like to get moving on developing avatars immediately.”
“Good,” Raisor said. “I’ll get as much intelligence as possible regarding our target.” He threw a satellite photo down on the desk. “Right now all we have is that the state of Kazakhstan is transferring twenty nuclear warheads via rail to Russia in accordance with the latest arms agreement signed between the two countries.
“The warheads will be on a train traveling from Semipalatinsk to Novosibirsk.” His finger traced a black line. “Along this rail line. Our analysts believe that the attack will occur just after the handover occurs on the Russian side of the border.”
“Why then?” Captain Anderson asked. “Why not on the Kazakhstan side?”
“Because we believe it is the Russian Mafia who will be conducting the raid. They have more power on the Russian side. They might even have infiltrated some of the soldiers who will be guarding the warheads.”
“What kind of security will the Russians have?” Anderson asked.
“One understrength company of infantry,” Raisor said. “About fifty men. The train itself will be armored.”
“That’s a pretty tough nut to crack” Anderson noted. “How do you figure the Mafia will be able to take it down?”
“We don’t know,” Raisor said. “But you do need to understand that the Mafia in Russia is very much unlike anything you’ve heard about here in the States. They are very powerful and well armed. There is a tremendous amount of firepower available on the black market in that part of the world. We’ve had reports of the Mafia having tanks and attack helicopters. Along with the trained personnel to use them. I have no doubt that if the Mafia wants to take down that train, they will do it.”
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